Singular Sound BeatBuddy Mini Drum Machine Pedal Reviews

Just hooked up my Beat Buddy Mini yesterday and set drum backing for most of my song lists. 4 hours went by before I knew it... What a great little unit, so easy to use and all my tunes sound better. The only thing that I think would improve it is to have an additional switch for a single tap outro. I found the double tap required on the multifunction switch was a little awkward but no doubt I will get used to it.
Wonderfull service and swift shipping from Sweetwater... Thank you!

An excellent little pedal for when your drummer is away , have a duo or even a solo gig. Very easy to operate and the drum sound although limited to one kit is very good.An excellent product at an excellent price. The service at Sweetwater is second to none.

Great customer service and communication. Really fast delivery. This was a christmas gift for my husband he loves it.

Great learning tool. Easy to.use. Many different musical genres. Much better for practice than a basic metronome. Ive been playing guitar over 30 years and I find this pedal very helpful. Anybody who complains about his pedal has got to realize, it's a hundred bucks folks and I think for that price it packs a lot of bang for your buck. If you want more then go spend $ on a drum machine :-)
Rock n Roll!

I have purchased and subsequently sold 4 or 5 different drum pedals and machines over the years. They were either too hard to program or just plain not fun to use. The BeatBuddy Mini blew me away. After seeing just one tutorial on the web, I took this thing out of the box and it actually does what I have always wanted a drum pedal to do...give me a variety of beats and sound great with unmatched ease of operation. I will be using this in my studio to lay down a drum track and then come back and keep all the rest of my tracks in time. It will be great for practice too. May use it at church for our drummer to have a visual metronome as well. This tool is cool!

this pedal is just great for what I'm using it for don't know how I got along with out it if any thing happens to it i'll have to get a new one i'll be lost with out it

If your looking for something to practice along with to stay on top with this is it perfect for travel, recording and to stay on top of your ideas!! Perfect for recording and comes with a ton of options!! Thank you Sweetwater!!

This drum machine pedal has really helped me get my timing better.

Great little addition to a solo gig. Sounds are great, pedal delivers on the promises it promotes. The one thing I wish was different would be to the ability to trade a straight metro count-in as an alternative to the intro fills. All in all, a really great pedal for the price.

Great little pedal for the money. Plugged it into my old Crate acoustic amp and it sounds great. Very easy and intuitive to use. Huge selection on styles and beats and easily adjusted. This is the drum machine I've been looking for. If you need a drummer for practice of laying down some tracks you can't do better than the beat buddy. It arrived in two days, well packed and in perfect condition. I plugged it in and was playing along with the beat in minutes. Wish I had this 10 years ago, simple to operate sounds great like recorded drums and best of all the mini was under $100.00. Highly recommend either the mini or original beat buddy for anyone needing a beat and tempo for practice.

The besat buddy mini and foot switch arrived promptly. I was a little confused as how to hook it up as far as what I supposed to run through. I think they operating instructions could be a little better but it seems the manufacturers are not providing instructions these days. After figuring out where it should go ( I like through a dI box to the PA) got running with it. It was pretty easy to operate with the foot switch. After getting it, I thought maybe I should have thrown down the extra cash for the regular one. Unfortunately 2 or 3 days after I got it, I had to go into the hospital and I'm still there. Maybe when I get out I can play with it a little more and give a better review. I love Sweetwater because of their top quality customer service. I will buy from Sweetwater when I can. Also me and the family are super excited about coming to Gear Fest. We are from GA and are making it part of our vacation in the RV. Thanks Sweetwater!

I play mostly at home for practice. This Drum machine/built in metronome keeps me right on beat. The adjustments are easy to make and there are more than enough styles for all practice needs. I need a little practice with the fills and transitions, but all in all a fun machine. If you play alone or your drummer isn't available this is a must. You could also use this for live Open mike situations where you usually play solo.

I received my BeatBuddymini on Sat 4/15. After discussion with Joel Helton my sales rep I decided on this model over its larger brother and the Trio machines. This unit satisfies all my needs. There are plenty of drum styles with variations of each. You can set the tempo with ease and the machine has its own volume along with a headphone out for quiet practice. I've been playing for over 40 years and the metronome helps me keep a steady beat. Something I've missed until now. I still need to learn the fills and transitions but using it more will really help. All in all does what it is supposed to do.

For knocking out quick ideas while writing this little dude is great. Absolutely super for the price! Well worth money.

The beat buddy is a fantastic little machine! Right out of the box we were jamming to amazing live drummer sound! With so many kits, and genres of music to choose from, it won't take you long to find "that" sound you're looking for! Love love love! Truly a must-have for any bass player in my opinion! I've had so much fun with it, that even the other fellows in the band have noticed my playing has improved!! I owe it to the hours of fun I have jamming alone with just myself and my beat buddy! A definite two thumbs up! And amazingly, it's priced so that almost every musician can afford one !

The singular sound beatbuddy is compact simple and sounds great, I pulled it out of box plugged it in and was jamming. I have a small P. A. I run mine into and at a very low volume(apartment life) I'm able to play entire songs. I use to have a programmable drum machine but spent more time building a song then I wanted.this is simple at a decent price. Helped with my timing for playing at open jams,and could use it for recording if your like me and don't have a computer

Great little device, perfect for when I go solo. My only disappointment was with the additional pedal that I bought to enhance the flexibility of this unit. This machine does not talk to the foot pedal, and I don't know which piece of equipment is to blame. But the beat buddy is working fine without it.

As with most drum machine presets, you will find a couple in most of the genres that will work for the bulk of what you are going to need. I have always found the more sparse the better when it comes to patterns.
There are some very good ones in this machine and it is an easier interface to work with (once you get familiar with it) then the desktop type machine. The tricky issue is the pickup fill going into each pattern. A real drummer will play a short pickup into a groove, perhaps a dotted quarter or half not long but very rarely a full measure. BB Mini gives each song a full measure of pickup. There is a way around this but it's a wee bit of a hassle. Use something like a volume pedal after the output to mute the pickup fill or have the volume pedal set at a much lower minimum volume for the intro pickup fill. Since the BB Mini gives a very visable que as to where it is and what beat it is on, it is simple to unmute the signal at the end of pickup
anytime you wish so the pattern is not cut off while you are attenuating the full measure pickup that is on every song. Next, do use the dual momentary pedal to access the extra features of the BB Mini. This machine is a fab value and if you spend some time sussing out the patterns, you will find enough to gig with that you like. When it comes to rhythm machine patterns, less is more so go for generic and sparse or that "hip little figure" will become fatiguing as it endlessly repeats. This is my rule for using any sort of mechanical accompaniment. The Latin and World Beat patterns are really nice as are some of the brush hit patterns and Country patterns, Beatbox, each category has a couple that will work over many songs.
Some are a bit busy to work as generic patterns but if you find even 2 in each category you will be able to
work with it. The break out pedal gives you some options that are essential for gigging (like pause, fill and the accent trigger which allows for crash hits). In summary, the BeatBuddy Mini has enough utility to make it a winner if you use your imagination. It requires a bit of time behind the wheel and as I mentioned, the 4 beat intro thing is way long for a pickup into a song but can be mitigated with a mute or a volume pedal.
Sweetwater has this at a great price and I recommend it as an alternative to the standard drum machine.

The BeatBuddy Mini is everything I was expecting and is the perfect solution for what I needed it for. The drums sound a lot more real than the Digitech Trio that I purchased a while ago and this has more options. I would recommend this to anyone for practice or for performing live.

Great for solo artists and for practice. Sounds great through the PA. Intuitive.

Singular Sound is on to something. The BeatBudy Mini Drum machine is well worth the minuscule price I paid. It's the size of a typical FX pedal but with big sound!
+Easy to read LED with tons of genres and sub-genres within those. Also contain tempo, time signature & "pulsing" light traveling across the screen to visually count out the beats, keeping you in sync with the count.
+I'm very impressed with the variety of genres and sub-ganres available to the musician. The BeatBuddy even has "Brush", "Beat Box" & "Techno" if your more interested in that style. I love the "Metal" & Prog beats.
+The switch is the tried and true "old style" switch but with out the "click". Very easy to activate.
+Simple to hook up. Comes with a quick start guide that I didn't need to use. Best sound when plugged into a "Flat" powered source like an aux in, PA, Etc but can be placed at the end of your FX line going into your guitar amp. (I don't recommend this just because the typical amp for guitars doesn't cover the frequencies that a drum kit does, but it still works.)
+The only complaint I can find is that if you turn the knob for the selection of beats too fast, it can skip a selection or go backwards instead of forwards (Thus the 41/2 stars). Just don't rush the control.

I plug mine into an input jack of my recorder and use it to lay down drum trks for songs I'm creating. With the BeatBuddy's fills, transitions & clear LED, it's pretty easy to lay down verses and throw in fills with a stomp (touch) of the switch or shift into full sounding choruses just by holding the button down until you're ready to go to the chorus.

As usual, Sweetwater and my most excellent rep, Mr. Needler, got the BeatBuddy to me in record time and if all my other orders are any hint as what's to come, my Rep will be calling me to check on my purchase. In 53 yrs on this planet I've never have encountered a business anything quite like Sweetwater and I'm happy to say that! My hat is off to Sweetwater. Thanks guys!

I'm a home recording guy. Thought this would be a great jam tool when friends come by, for recording on my own songs (Boss BR1200CD) and for jamming alone, which is by far the most common, unfortunately. Works as advertised. Sounds good. Built well. For the price, can't ask for much more. Thanks to sales engineer Ryan M for sharing his thoughts and helping me out. Sweetwater is just The Best. Period! So far, very happy with this product.

If you've read some of the earlier reviews you might have noticed complaints about the mandatory full measure Intro on every beat.

I've had two of these. Smoked the first one with a bogus power supply. My bad. Live and Learn. Anyway, the first one had the Intros and they could not be shut off.

The second one, I found if I held the main control down for a second, "Intro On/Off" appeared on the display. Sweet! It doesn't remember the setting and defaults to on so you have to shut them off each time you power up the unit.

After you get that annoying Intro thing out of the way it functions as advertised. What you get for the price in this unit is amazing. Even if you don't plan to play out with it, it's the best metronome ever, EVER. A big bar goes across the display for every beat. You always know where you are at a glance.

Nice drum machine.Still in the learning stage, but user friendly. Tracks are better
than expected.

I bought this to use at home while playing by myself and writing/jamming. This is very handy for improving your timing if you play guitar alone a lot, and also for seeing how something you're working on sounds with some drums. The sounds aren't super high-quality, but very satisfactory for jamming/writing. There's plenty of genres and kits, and I found it pretty easy to get comfortable switching between between Intro/Outro, drum fill, transition. It's definitely worth branching out into other genres.

Better than a boring metronome!

Loads of fun. You can hear a song emerge in your head just listening to it.

I bought the Mini because I didn't want to spend the money on the full size BeatBuddy. The Mini is fine for most people who are just fooling around in their garages. After trying it out for an hour or so, here are my thoughts: I don't like the "intro" every time you begin a beat (or the "extro" afterwards). When I tap the button, I want to go right into a song. But my main complaint is that when you hold down the pedal, it goes into a riff until you let up. I would rather see the Mini stop momentarily until I let up. It would also be nice if it were programmable, but I understand that that's left for the big boys.

I play lots of country music and I have only been able to use three blues "songs" in the Blues folder for my country songs.
The country folder is useless, how many shuffles can you use. None of the classic country songs I play have that style. And the "folder" does not include one "song" that has a prominent "Rim Shot" which is the most common of country beats.

If this product did not have Blues #1 #2 and #3 I would put it back in its box.The one thing I like about the product is its ability to store and recall songs in a set list and access them via footswitch. This is handy for live performances. The product is well built, but the engineers need to do some better listening to real practical drumming so they can have their drummers produce those beats.

I purchased the Beat Buddy when it first came out and i found drum patterns listed under country that i just could not get the sound of country from either of them.. Then i downloaded the desktop program so you can make changes either adding or removing drum instruments and i found it took a lot of time and then i had to export it to the sd card and then back to he drummer. I found it complicated, time consuming, and finally i got frustrated and never did use it for a gig so i sold it and the gentleman that bought it from me after a month of playing with it, he too finally sold it.. Gone back to the Alesis sr16

Umm i wonder about the mini but just not sure if that'll be a good buy.

Seriously, I purchased the original Beatbuddy straight from the company as part of their original Gofundme effort. When I finally got it, I was slightly impressed but it was just too much work to get anything accomplished. I mean, if you have nothing but time, go ahead and buy one and tinker for hours on end. I sold it but when I saw there was a mini version that simplified the process I decided to give Beatbuddy another shot. Once I got it (quickly thanks to the awesome people at Sweetwater) it took me all of 30 minutes to pack it back up and return it. The sounds are junk. Fake sounding, casio keyboard nonsense. The beats are lame. The intros you have to use and the outs are so bad you would think a 3 year old programed this thing. Unusable for anything unless you are a complete noob. I have a competitors unit that adds some bass to the mix and the drum sounds on that are 1000 times better. Avoid. This is a gimmick.

Very disappointed with the product, all songs begin with a drum solo instead of a count in...in real situations how many songs start with a drum solo?...

It has no memory! Your preset tempos are not held. Change the drum style and it defaults to a factory setting when you go back. I contacted the BB folks, their reply was maybe the BB biggie would be a better choice for me. I guess I expected more. I feel they stripped it down to the bone to make it affordable and that's what it is. Buy it from somewhere you can trade up. Don't forget your wallet.